Soup

October 12, 2012

But never cream of celery. Who invented that? Did someone really think suspending celery in gelatinous cream was a good idea? Here's another good idea: discontinue cream of celery soup.

Today, I make my own soup. I can toss in whatever I want -- beans, or vegetables, or bones, or pocket lint, because guess what? If some big company can make soup out of creamy, gelatinous celery, I can make mine out of anything at all. Want soup out of dust bunnies? Auto parts? Dead batteries? Pot's on the stove.

Yesterday, though, I focused on cauliflower, garbanzos, and kale.

While the night grew dark and the boys did homework and the radio played, I chopped and sautéed and seasoned until the house felt warm and the kitchen swelled with soupy steam. Then I heaped sharp cheese on thick bread and slid it under the broiler.

Soon, dinner was served.

And the lint stayed in my pocket for one more night.

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Recipe for Garbanzo Cauliflower Soup with cheddar toasts

Smoked paprika adds a golden color to this hearty, dinner-friendly soup. If you can't find baby kale, pull the stems from adult kale and chop the leaves before adding them to the stock.

We'll talk about the superiority of freshly cooked garbanzos in a future post, but you can certainly use canned here if you like.

Add the olive oil, onion, garlic, carrot, celery, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper to a large soup pot or Dutch oven and place over medium heat. Sauté until the vegetables are very tender. Add the cauliflower, stock, wine, smoked paprika, and thyme sprigs, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer gently for about 20 minutes.

August 30, 2012

So after you tease apart the tassels and unfurl the husks, depilate the silks and crack off the stems, drop those ears in a full-on, rumbling, leaping boil. Three minutes, no more. Use some tongs to get them out, and work in batches. Onto a rack they go, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Keep going if you want, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Twelve's good, twelve's enough.

While your ears cool, read a book. Just pick up a book and read it. After about 10 pages, your corn will be cool enough to handle.

Prop a cob at a jaunty angle, then use a sturdy knife to sweep down the sides so the kernels fall off in clumps and chunks. Keep going, sweep, sweep, sweep. Gold will mound before you.

You'll be tired by ear five, or six, but save your complaining for someone else because honestly? I don't want to hear about it. Just plow ahead, go forth, and think of how lucky you are even to have corn this good. You thank that corn and you move on.

And when you're done, set aside 4-1/2 cups of kernels for the soup. With the rest, make the Corn with Cilantro-Lime Salt from Ripe. And if you have even more left over after that, you're welcome.

Now. Take a cutting board, and your heaviest knife, and set the knife blade atop each spent cob and carefully leverage your weight until the cob snaps in two. Sawing won't help much here, so use your body. Cut each cob at least in half, or, if you're brave, in thirds.

Throw your cobettes in a large pot and add fresh, cold water to cover by an inch or two. (I dumped my original cooking water because I didn't decide to make cobby stock until later in the day. It's up to you if you want to experiment with using the still warm cooking water. You may need to pour some out.)

Crank the flame, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat slightly and let those cobs bubble, uncovered, for 45 to 60 minutes while you return to your book. Peek at the pot now and again, and if the water dips dangerously low, add a touch more. A little evaporation's normal, even good.

When time's up, you've got stock. (Discard the cobs.)

Now you're ready to make corn cob soup.

And look at that.

You've read a book.

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Recipe for Corn Cob Soup

The base of this soup comes from a stock of spent corn cobs. I'm in no way the first person to come up with this idea, and in fact, I discovered last night while catching up on my Sunday New York Times that Mark Bittman used this technique in several corn soup recipes in the magazine this past weekend. Note to self: Don't wait two weeks before posting a recipe because you'll look like you're copying Mark Bittman.

Add the oil, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, salt, and pepper to a medium soup pot set over low heat. Cover, and let the vegetables soften and sweat for about 15 minutes, stirring two or three times. Add corn kernels and corn cob stock. Bring to a boil.

Lower heat, partly cover, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes. Cool slightly. Puree about three-quarters of the soup, then return to the pot. Correct seasonings (salt, pepper, and some lime juice), as the natural flavor of the soup will be quite sweet. Swirl each serving with yogurt, sour cream, or creme fraiche.

October 31, 2011

We're all foragers, in a sense. Seekers, searchers, lookers, lurkers. We upturn rocks and unearth stones, hoping to find a hidden gem beneath the mossy overgrowth.

And occasionally we find it. A gem, that is. And we polish it until it gleams, and then we polish it some more. Eventually, we polish it so much we can see our own reflection in it, and this is not necessarily a good thing. Remember Narcissus?

I lost perspective last week. I got caught up in my work. Got too close to it, too entangled in the minutiae of this and that, and by Thursday, I needed out. I went to a farm, took some pictures of hens and collards, saw okra sprouting from the earth, met a woman who is living her ideals, and had lunch with a friend. My heart rate slowed back to normal.

When I woke up the next morning, things were better. I could once again see the forest for the trees.

But I'm afraid I'm wired this way. You may be, too.

So let's make a deal: When we head back into that forest, let's promise each other we'll go slowly next time. We'll pick up our projects, and look at them, and deal with them, and work on them, but we'll do it with a calmer tack. When we forage, and see something beautiful, and upturn rocks, and unearth stones, and find a hidden gem, let's promise ourselves we'll only polish it so far.

That fine, subtle, imperfect layer of dirt and grit, it's good for us.

It tells us we're human. It reminds us we can't be perfect, and that the very act of trying to be can do us all more harm than good.

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Recipe for Mixed Mushroom Brisket Soup

I bought a large brisket. Half went into the slow cooker with a jar of salsa for tacos, and the other half I diced up for an earthy, autumnal, meaty mushroom soup. (This recipe served as my jumping off point.) Later in the week, I added leftover rice for one lunch, and leftover white beans for the next. That brisket stretched for days, which made a tough week a little bit easier.

In a large soup pot, warm the oil over medium-high heat. Brown the brisket on all sides. Remove with a slotted spoon. The beef will have given off some fat. Before proceeding, see how much fat is in the pot. You want about two tablespoons total. (Add a bit more oil if you have less than that, and if you have more, pour some fat off.)

Add the onion, celery, carrot, garlic, and thyme, and season with kosher salt and pepper. Saute until the vegetables begin to brown, about 10 minutes. Add the mushrooms. Saute for 5 minutes longer.

Return the brisket to the pot, and pour in the broth and sherry. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to very low and simmer, partly covered, until brisket is thoroughly cooked, and the meat and vegetables are very tender, about 1 hour. Serve hot. (If you have leftovers, stretch the soup with cooked rice, barley, quinoa, wheat berries, or beans.)

July 14, 2011

When I was a high school freshman, my best friend and I met two boys on Casino Night who were juniors. I'm going to skip the rest of the story, but suffice it to say that the fact that these boys were 16 to our 14 was an enormous deal, and pretty much all we could talk about. "They're JUNIORS!" "I KNOW!!!" "Can you believe they're seriously JUNIORS?" "I seriously KNOW!"

Two years later, when I was a junior myself, I occasionally gave a sophomore a ride to school. I could drive, and he was on my way. And I thought to myself, you know, I am just so grown-up and he is such a young kid, and isn't he lucky to know someone as old as me who has this amazing ability to transport him in a working motor vehicle.

Fast forward.

This morning, I had coffee with someone a decade younger than me.

And in two weeks, I'm having coffee with someone born in 1988.

I was not born in 1988.

And yet, somehow or other, we are peers. This amuses me.

My professional circle, like yours (I'm guessing), is vast, broad, and diverse. And the age range is tremendous. Depending on whom I'm with, I either feel like a crypt keeper, or a fetus. It's all relative, and I kind of love it.

Food is relative, too. On sweltering days, hot soup is a death wish. On breezier days, it's just the ticket -- welcome, comforting, and altogether perfect.

Though I know it's summer, try this beautiful, silky soup on a cool evening. Don't skip the lemon or the tomato, but if you can't find or don't have za'atar, simply substitute dried herbs of your choice. And fresh sweet corn kernels would make a fine stand-in for the squash. (Just add them at the end.)

Examine the split peas and pick out any stones. Rinse under cool water in a fine mesh strainer and dump into a medium pot. Add the potatoes, bay leaf, and 6 cups cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer steadily (uncovered) until the peas are tender, about 30 minutes, adding 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper towards the end of cooking. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet over medium heat, warm 3 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add the onion, garlic, carrot, squash, and 1 tablespoon of the za'atar. Season generously with salt and pepper. (Don't skimp.) Saute for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the vegetables begin to brown. Then lower the heat and saute until tender, 5 to 10 minutes longer. Sprinkle the tomato on top.

In a small bowl, stir the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil with the remaining tablespoon of za'atar. Set aside.

Discard the bay leaf. Puree the peas and potatoes. (I use a stick blender right in the pot.) Squeeze in a generous amount of fresh lemon juice, to taste, and correct the seasonings.

To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and spoon a giant heap of vegetables on top. Drizzle with the za'atar oil and spritz with more lemon, if desired.

January 10, 2011

Part of me thinks: if I just eat enough leafy greens, everything will be okay. I'll get my work done, for one. And my kids will grow up to be productive citizens of the world. If I eat more leafy greens, I won't forget to return library books or call that guy about the crack in the living room ceiling.

And then I think, you know, what if everyone ate more leafy greens? If old people ate more, they'd play better bridge, and if teenagers ate more, they'd get better grades, and if sharks ate more, maybe they wouldn't bite people's arms off.

But why stop there? It may just be that leafy greens are the answer to all of life's problems. How do I solve this quadratic equation? Leafy greens. Why did everyone say The Kings Speech was so great when I thought it was just pretty good? Leafy greens. Why does the federal government deliver mail each day rather than, say, a fine assortment of French cheeses?

Think about it.

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Vegetable Soup with mustard greens and black lentils

I wouldn't just give three cheers for this soup, I'd give four, or even five. I love how the mustard greens provide a brightness and springy spark even though it's the middle of January. Keep in mind that black beluga lentils will turn the stock rather dark. If this bothers you, you can cook the lentils separately, but frankly, I'm not sure why you would, unless dishwashing is a pastime you especially enjoy.

Dump in the rinsed lentils, the broth or stock, and the equivalent of 1 can of cold water (just shy of 2 cups). Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer gently, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Add the squash and simmer for 3 minutes.

Toss in the mustard greens and, using tongs, plunge and swirl them so they're submerged. Cook, covered, for about 5 minutes. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

February 02, 2010

I can't say I find getting older all that gratifying. Yes, it's nice not to worry about acne, or spelling tests, or hiding behind my locker when changing for PE, but let's be honest: I was, and continue to be, an excellent speller.

Wait, I got off track -- one of the other things about getting older. That, and morning breath. I firmly maintain that my breath smelled like fresh mountain air, and tender sprigs of spearmint, until I hit age 30.

One thing has changed for the better, though: my increased tolerance for spicy foods. I don't know if my taste buds peaked in my twenties or I accidentally lost a couple thousand during childbirth, but I now keep a bottle of Sriracha in the house and actually enjoy the sensation of burning off large parts of my tongue. It's a good pain.

I remember a few years ago, when I was writing an article for my college alumni magazine. I visited campus and toured the dining center, and when I got to the condiment table my mouth hit the floor. When I was a student, back when Stevie Nicks didn't have to share a Grammy stage with long-limbed upstarts, we had things like, I don't know, salt and pepper. Maybe ketchup and mustard, probably mayo. But that was it. We didn't have Sriracha back then. There was no little fridge with red curry base. Three kinds of Green Mountain Coffee. Chai Latte Mix. A George Foreman grill for making your own paninis. Who the hell do these kids think they are?

But now I have Sriracha in my own kitchen arsenal, and though I use only the barest, wimpiest squeeze, I still feel a rush of power as the roof of my mouth becomes a screaming inferno and my tongue begs for mercy. I may be old enough to be someone's mother, but I can now, finally, take the heat.

Bring it on, all you youthful collegians! You've got absolutely nothing on me.

This demure and healthful soup gets a devilish kick in the ass from a tiny dollop of Sriracha, a thick chili sauce that stokes a fire in your mouth in the most invigorating way. A sprinkling of Chinese five spice powder adds complexity, and mushrooms add that elusive 5th taste, umami. Don't you just love that word? Umami, umami, umami.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the noodles according to package directions. Drain.

Meanwhile, heat the chicken stock, ginger slices, and 5 spice powder to a hard simmer. Add the mushrooms. Gently lower the fish into the broth, add the salt and pepper, and turn the heat down as low as you can. Cover the saucepan, and poach the fillets for 8 minutes, or until opaque and cooked through.

Divide the noodles among 4 bowls. When the fish is ready, use a slotted spoon to carefully lay a generous piece atop each tangle of noodles. Ladle with the broth and mushrooms (discard the ginger). Garnish with a leaf or two of cilantro, and pass the Sriracha alongside.

January 13, 2010

So let's say you made the beans. Here's what you're going to do with them.

Behold my little tweak on Romney Steele's minestrone recipe. From her breathtaking new book My Nepenthe (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2009), this recipe has everything I love in a soup: hearty, filling protein from the beans, vibrant color from the vegetables, and cute little shapes of tender pasta. If it weren't so hot in the soup pot, I might dive in and swim around.

Remember a few months ago when I wrote a post called Thread? About how you never know which professional opportunities will pay off, so you should pretty much say yes to every invitation? Well, someone should beat me with a rutabaga because I recently ignored my own advice.

I'd met Romney (aka "Nani") at the BlogHer Food conference for about a minute and a half. I don't think we did much more than smile and shake hands, and when I heard she'd just written a book called My Nepenthe my eyes glazed over. I'd heard of My Antonia, but My Nepenthe might as well have been called My Refrigerator Magnet for all the interest it piqued in me. I had no idea what it meant, so I flitted on.

Bad move #1.

It turns out that people in the Bay Area do know what Nepenthe means. It refers to a Big Sur restaurant on the California coast that sports breathtaking views, has a rich and illustrious 60 year history, and has served as the cultural gathering place for artists, writers, dancers, and bohemians of all stripes.

Nani's grandparents, who built the restaurant, originally bought the land from Rita Hayworth.

Orson Welles had bought it for Rita. You see where I'm going?

I did not know this.

So right after BlogHer Food when my friend Sarah invited me to Nani's book release party, at Nepenthe, I think I said something eloquent like, "Sorry, I can't because of [blah and blah and blah.]" After all, why go to a book launch for a woman I'd hardly met at a place I'd never heard of?

Bad move #2.

A few weeks later, after I dissed the launch, I got the book. (Thanks to Dianne for encouraging me to get a copy.)

My Nepenthe is stunning, unique, and absolutely captivating. Not just the lovely writing about Nani's grandparents and large, extended family, not just the rich history of this unusual locale. The physical pages of this book leap to life with the most glorious splashes of color and texture. In addition to being a writer and cook, Nani is a food stylist, and her aesthetic completely drew me in. The photographs capture the bohemian lifestyle, with beatific looking women with long hair and flowing skirts; architectural details like heavy-hinged wooden doors and rustic cobblestone walls; and children playing together, then and now. It's a portrait of a real family over time, in a place of glorious natural beauty.

I made a few tweaks to Nani's original Day at the Beach Minestrone recipe, subbing yellow eye beans for the cannellinis, a Japanese sweet potato for the regular potato, green beans for the zucchini, and a whole bunch of lacinato kale for the chard.

Keep in mind that minestrone is endlessly versatile. Use whatever vegetables you like, whatever variety of dried or canned beans you have on hand, and your favorite style of little pasta.

If using dried beans, soak overnight in cold water. Drain, rinse, and fill pot with beans. Cover with cold water by 2 inches, and bring to a boil. Lower heat slightly and boil beans gently until tender. (This will take between 25 minutes and an hour, depending on what type of beans you use and how fresh they are.) Drain and rinse. Set aside.

In a large soup pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add celery, carrots, garlic, and thyme, and sauté, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes. Stir in the sweet (or regular) potato, tomatoes (break them up if whole), vegetable broth, and water.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer gently for about 25 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender but not mushy. Add the green beans, dried pasta, reserved cooked (or canned) beans, kale, and an additional cup of water, if necessary. Simmer until pasta and vegetables are tender and greens are wilted, about 10 to 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

November 30, 2009

My fifteen year old neighbor dropped off a paper grocery bag on Wednesday. Stapled to the top was an index card, which read, and I paraphrase:

Fill this bag with canned food for the needy, set it out on your porch, and I'll pick it up on Saturday at 10am and drop it off at the food bank.

For the past two weeks I've been meaning to contribute to the food drive at my kids' school. And though frequent emails kept this to-do near the top of my list, every time I walked out the door, I forgot to bring the cans. There's no excuse for my lack of follow-through -- it's pathetic, really. Turns out I'm just the kind of person who responds best when things are made really, really easy.

And a paper bag left on my doorstep was really, really easy. So I filled it with cans, set it out, and my neighbor picked it up. Her tiny effort catapulted me into action, and someone hungry will eat as a result.

So it's in this vein that I offer you a very, very easy way to do good. You can do it right now, preferably, while I'm reminding you, or you can do it at any point during the month of December.

Here's what I've done: I've put a button in the right hand sidebar that links directly to Network for Good, a highly reputable online charity hub. I've chosen my local chapter of the Second Harvest Food Bank, a nonprofit that serves more than 200,000 hungry people in my community every month, as the beneficiary.

What I'm asking: Click on the button and give $5. That's it. $4.76 will go to Second Harvest Food Bank, and $.24 (4.75%) will go to Network for Good for their administrative and other costs. If you want all $5 to go to the food bank, up your donation to $5.24.

Why $5? Because it's easy, small, doable, and really shouldn't require much thought. You'll get a receipt from Network for Good, and your donation is fully tax-deductible. Here's more information.

Need a nudge? In the year and a half I've been writing this blog, I've struggled with whether or not to put up advertising. Other than my Amazon links, I've opted to keep this site clean, simple, and ad-free. No annoying flash buttons, no banners screaming for you to buy Pampers or Lucky Charms. I want this space to have a prevailing sense of calm, and I do believe it does.

So... In return, I'd be so grateful if you'd make a one-time $5 donation to support a cause that means a lot to me. You'll feel good, I swear.

Collectively, I bet we can raise a pretty decent sum. Best of all, we can all watch the numbers on the widget inch up throughout December.

Did I mention how handsome/beautiful you look today?

As a token of my appreciation, here's a nice hot bowl of soup for your troubles.

I made it just for you.

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p.s. If you're a blogger, I encourage you to add a Network for Good widget to your own site to spread this effort to your own readership. You can customize the widget for your blog and sponsor a charity of your choice.

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p.p.s. While not necessary, feel free to email me or leave a comment if you've donated and I'd be happy to acknowledge your generosity (by first name or blog name) in a future post.

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Recipe for Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup

If you're wondering why I'm putting up another slow cooker soup recipe, it's because I'm completely enamored with the lack of effort required to get a pot of hot, healthy goodness on my table. Plus, soup makes me think of food drives, and food drives make me think of charitable giving, and that's what this post is all about.

November 22, 2009

I'm not one for posting on weekends, but with Thanksgiving only days away I thought I'd share my most recent contribution to Nourish Network. Anyone who has ever spent Thanksgiving far from home will, I think, be able to relate to the piece, called "Wherever you are, there's the feast."

You'll also find a recipe for Lentil Soup with roasted pumpkin. I'm guessing you spend so much time preparing the Big Meal for other people that you forget to stock the house with food you can actually eat while you cook like a maniac. Make this soup, and warm it in the microwave all week long to give you sustenance.

November 16, 2009

Congratulations to Jon, the winner of my Almost Meatlessgiveaway. I used this site to generate a random number, and Jon's comment corresponded with the number that came up. (I controlled for people who commented twice and excluded my husband and myself.)

That post drew an unprecedented response and taught me three valuable lessons:

1) people like to win free stuff;

2) people who read my blog don't eat much meat, or they eat tons of meat, but lied blatantly and shamelessly, thinking it would up their chances of winning the book (it didn't); and

3) people like to win free stuff.

The fact that so many of you didn't win the cookbook makes me cry a little, so I offer you, below, a recipe for slow cooker yellow split pea soup with ham. In the spirit of the book, which you didn't win (unless you're Jon), the recipe uses some meat, but just a wee bit. Perhaps you'll now hate me slightly less.

Though I'm loathe to admit it, my slow cooker has recently beguiled me with its charms, and I'm using it far more this year than I have in years past. Problem is, I always feel like I'm cheating on my other appliances when I pull it out. I kind of turn my back to the stove when I plug it in, hoping to obscure what I'm doing. Like, oh, I'm just checking the slow cooker to see if it's okay, or I'm dusting it. But then the oven sees what's going on, and I get caught in this very awkward lie. The only way to really hide my disloyalty would be to drag the slow cooker into the laundry room, an act that might soothe my guilt but would give my soup the unmistakable flavor of Bounce.

Still, though, if you've recently bit off more than you can chew work wise, and if you have eight irons in the fire rather than the normal two, you might find that a little dalliance with a time-saving appliance is what it's going to take to get food in your belly. If the stove and the oven get pissed off, well, that's a small price to pay for a hot meal at the end of a very long day.

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Recipe for Slow Cooker Yellow Split Pea Soup with Ham

I can't overstate how easy this recipe is, or how thick, comforting, and filling. You throw everything in the slow cooker (mine is a 5-quart capacity model), and presto change-o, you have soup. As with all soups, it keeps beautifully.

Place ingredients in slow cooker exactly as written. Cover, set to high or low, and cook until the peas fall apart and the soup is smooth and very thick. (Soup will take about 5 hours on high or 8 to 10 hours on low, or you can start it on high and turn it to low halfway through, which is what I did. Just don't leave it on high for more than 5 hours or the bottom will dry out.)

Discard the thyme sprigs. If desired, thin with a bit of water before serving.

Leftovers should be cooled and refrigerated. Soup will thicken into a mass in the fridge, so you'll need to thin it with additional water before reheating.

Welcome to my blog. My name is Cheryl Sternman Rule. I’m a Silicon Valley food writer with a lot to say and a keen desire to share it with a broad audience. I write cookbooks and freelance for numerous national publications. To read my full bio and see samples of my print work, visit my portfolio website at cherylsternmanrule.com.